Short Essays

This audiobook, read by Audie award-winning narrators, includes unabridged recordings of all Fyodor Dostoyevky's greatest works: 15 novels and novellas, 18 short stories, a short study of Dostoyevsky by Virginia Woolf, and two books of non-fiction - his Letters and European travel journal.

Edgar-award winning author Dana Stabenow is best known for her Kate Shugak novels, but the unifying protagonist of almost all her writing - be it crime, fantasy, horror, or science fiction - is Alaska. This genre-spanning collection of 16 short stories features familiar characters like Kate and Jim, Liam and Wy, and Bill and Moses, but also ranges farther afield than many listeners will expect.

Edgar Allan Poe was a writer, poet, editor and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre, and is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and of American literature. Poe was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story and considered to be the inventor of the detective fiction genre, as well as a significant contributor to the emerging genre of science fiction.

African American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent. It begins with the works of such late 18th-century writers as Phillis Wheatley. Before the high point of enslaved people narratives, African-American literature was dominated by autobiographical spiritual narratives. The genre known as slave narratives in the 19th century were accounts by people who had generally escaped from slavery, about their journeys to freedom and ways they claimed their lives.

This audiobook, read by Audie award-winning narrators, includes unabridged recordings of all Mark Twains's greatest works: 12 novels; over 120 of his beloved short stories; Chapters From My Autobiography; 5 pieces of short non-fiction; and 6 pieces of his groundbreaking, wide-ranging travel writing.

The Virginia Woolf Complete Collection brings together all of her most iconic works, including all 9 of her published novels, a selection of her best short stories, as well as some of her most influential non-fiction writing. From the enduring importance of her ideas of female independence in A Room of One's Own to the modern masterpieces of Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, alongside many more of her novels, criticism, and essays, this collection takes you across the broad breadth of Woolf's ever-inventive and timeless writings.

David Bain offers ten essays on writing, with an eye toward helping new writers gain their footing and keeping the more seasoned scribe motivated. It also includes his essay "Basic E-Book Self-Publishing Advice for Newbies" which has already helped hundreds of beginning indie authors. A longtime college English prof and former newspaper bureau chief, Bain infuses these essays on the writing life with years of teaching, editing, and indie publishing experience, using an easygoing yet incisive style.

This essay is an introduction on the Tao Te Ching exploring the three points of truth, love ,and the interconnectedness of the life. It is written in a modern style using the pop music of Kenny Loggins, Bruce Springsteen, and David Gates to illustrate the points. The purpose of this essay is to serve as a companion to the Tao Te Ching. It is for those who wish to dive deeper into the essence of the Tao while living in the modern world.

"Searingly honest, brilliant and disturbing. Brad Phillips peels back the skin and bone and stares right into the human soul." (Anthony Bourdain) Brad Phillips' collection of short stories adeptly walks a very thin line between taboo and propriety, with rigorous self-awareness and generosity. By confusing ideas around fiction and autobiography, Phillips writes with painful sincerity about shame, addiction, trauma, and the more troubling outreaches of sexual desire, with wit that is at odds with the subject matter. Brad Phillips is a well-known Canadian artist.

Alexander Chee, an essayist of “virtuosity and power” (Washington Post), selects twenty essays out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year.

Linguist is a collection of 101 short stories, essays, and insights to improve your communication skills. A linguist is someone who is highly skilled with words. The stories in this book will teach you how to effectively use words to create opportunities in your life.

In her introduction to this year’s The Best American Essays, guest editor Vivian Gornick states that her selections “contribute materially to the long and honorable history of the personal essay by way of the value they place on lived experience.” Provocative, daring, and honest at a time when many writers are deliberately silencing themselves in the face of authoritarian and populist censorship movements, the twenty-one essays collected here reflect their authors’ unapologetic observations of the world around them.

Certain elements, rituals, and stories have been passed down within the brotherhood of masons from those great workers and architects that created structures from King Solomon’s Temple to the classic churches of the Middle Age. The stories and legends of our progenitor and our first Grandmaster could be true. The layout of the lodge and the offices occupied within the lodges of the Freemasons may indeed date back to the time of King Solomon, yet none of these events explain the strange words, terms, and and military-like events taking place within the lodge today.

A collection of the year’s best short stories, selected by Pulitzer Prize winner Andrew Sean Greer and series editor Heidi Pitlor.

“Imparting some piece of yourself—any part—is arduous and warrants some kind of commendation,” writes guest editor Wesley Morris in his introduction. Both personal and personable, the essayists in this volume use their own vulnerability to guide listeners on excursions that unfold on uncomfortable edges. From contemplating the nuances of memory to exploring the complexities of family, romance, gender identity, illness, and death, Morris’s selection of essays presents a roundup of the thinkers who masterfully grapple with the issues of our time.

A striking and nuanced collection, bringing to life awkward college students, disgraced public figures, raunchy grandparents, and mystical godmothers. To listen to these stories is to experience the transporting joys of discovery and affirmation, and to realize that story writing in America continues to flourish.

When Harold Ross founded The New Yorker in 1925, he described it as a “comic weekly.” And although it has become much more than that, it has remained true in its irreverent heart to the founder’s description, publishing the most illustrious literary humorists of the modern era. This anthology gathers together, for the first time, the funniest work of more than seventy New Yorker contributors.

Although never considered to be a popular speaker nor prolific writer, A. W. Tozer's audiences did appreciate what he had to say, and he was probably the most widely read Christian writer of his time. Keys to the Deeper Life contains six of his best-known essays and editorials. In them he rigorously examines many of the failings and foibles of his day. Although most were written more than three decades ago, the insights they offer are as fresh and thought-provoking as the day they were published.

Pathways is a collection of Quintus Curtius’ very best short essays from 2015. Speaking in an original and compelling voice, these essays cover an amazing variety of subjects in history, philosophy, current events, ethics, biography, physical health, travel, and language.

"From nothing to nothing is no time at all." (John Steinbeck) Two men discuss their New Year's resolutions shortly after midnight on December 31, 2014. The discussion is inspired by a piece of minimalist piano music by Steve Reich and turns to the meaning and nature of time, drawing on John Steinbeck's famous quote.